


I love the color Red (it is for Love, it is for Death)

by americandy



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Art School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-19
Updated: 2014-01-19
Packaged: 2018-01-08 18:26:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1135969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/americandy/pseuds/americandy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jimmy Kent is a strange student in one of art teacher Thomas Barrow's classes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I love the color Red (it is for Love, it is for Death)

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Oh Land's 'Voodoo', like, one of the best thommy songs ever. It's on the playlist I made. Ya'll should download it.

Art is subjective, beauty is subjective, success is subjective. Jimmy Kent decided to take form classes as his art requirement and the instructor, Mister Barrow, liked to repeat the phrase often. It didn’t make sense, really, because though he went by Mister Barrow, a quick google search revealed he was the portraiture artist Thomas Barrow, of Downton fame. The level of success he encoutered in the art world was entirely objectively impressive. Jimmy supposed he had perhaps gotten to the level he was at by reminding himself that nothing is dependable and those things were subjective.

A nude woman is standing in the middle of the room, draped in velvet kind of like Venus, and they’re supposed to be drawing her. Jimmy can’t keep his eyes off of Thomas, Mister Barrow, as he circles around the room, assessing progress. Jimmy has her rough form sketched out while his peers on either side are putting detail into the fabric around her waist, light-years ahead of him. Thomas has white skin, lily-white, and dark starkly contrasting hair. His eyebrows are expressive and bold, his eyes a kind of blue and green that need up close and personal inspection in order to be properly described. His nose cuts a dignified line and his mouth is neither pink nor red, more amaranth than anything else. He's pretty.

—

Jimmy Kent is not one of Thomas’s favorite students. He has blond hair and a pouty mouth like one of Carvaggio’s boys, and that’s nice to look at, but his behavior is… odd. He pretends like he doesn't stare at Thomas, glancing away whenever their eyes happen to meet. His eyes are blue like Thomas’s, but they are dark, like clouds loom in his mind. The natural slope of Kent’s shoulders squares tensely whenever he passes behind him and when he offers a few words of suggestion or critique, his hands ball up into fists. Jimmy Kent will either end up killing him, kissing him, or fighting him, and he hopes for the sake of his gentler-natured students that whatever it is happens outside of the studio. He doesn't think he has to worry about classroom violence.

—

A week before the quarter ends, a small square of sketchbook paper appears on the ledge of Thomas's easel sometime before the end of class. After he releases his students and everyone filters out, painfully slowly, he returns to his easel. Opening the paper that’s been folded over twice reveals a portrait of sorts, of him. Drawn in charcoal, it’s actually a remarkable impression, drawn cheekily, shirtless and down to his navel. Behind him is a watercolor sky done in some blues and purples and hints of black. There’s no note or artist’s mark but he has a feeling who’s responsible for this. At least classroom violence is definitely off the table. It’s a little unnerving, staring down at his shirtless, stylized likeness. It was clearly crafted with a good bit of care. Jimmy Kent has a good deal of artistic talent, apparently. His eye is keen for detail and his color mixing is beautiful. It's off-putting that Thomas is his inspiration, rather than the class's subject matter. However, he thinks this is a sight better than imitation, in terms of flattery. Inappropriate? Yes, but there’s no harm in keeping it. Perhaps to show Sybil later when they go out for drinks, though more likely because it’s proof that he’s quantifiable as a… pin up.

It’s a lovely notion to entertain.

—  
Jimmy started having the dreams before he consciously developed an affinity for Thomas. Maybe he developed this affection -- a queer twist in his stomach, a turning in his head, a droplet of sweat running down the back of his neck -- because of the dreams. A year ago, he would have laughed if someone had told him what he would be dreaming of almost nightly. They sound like covers of garish and cheap romance novels come to life when said aloud or written down. The way they affect him is embarrassing and foolish; it's not like Thomas is devastatingly handsome. That's what he says to reassure himself, anyway.  
\--  
It always starts the same way. Jimmy is sleeping on a bed, not his bed, but one that's bigger, with four thick and ornate posts made of beautiful mahogany, dressed in sheets he'd be comfortable dying in, with a tapestry as a canopy overhead. He's jolted awake for a reason he can't decide on, and he looks up at the scene in draped fabric above him -- the sky is dark yet star-studded behind a garden with a white tomb in the middle of it, covered in ivy. The door of the tomb is cracked open.

  
Then he turns his head, looking at a stone wall with a window and an iron grate inside of it. The sky is the color of the time between late night and early morning, a blue that suspends time, for a little while.

  
"I only just realized the irony of a depiction of my former resting place hanging above my new one." A voice comes from behind him, and he turns his head again, and it's Thomas, but not really.

  
He looks like Thomas, but this creature at the other side of the bed is inhuman, Jimmy can feel. His skin is veined marble now, translucent instead of pale. His mouth is oxblood and his eyes are dark, darker blue than Jimmy’s, with swollen pupils. He smiles at Jimmy before a curious thing happens: he starts to dissolve.

  
Starting at the top of his head, he crumbles away quickly into a dust that is no color at all, it almost seems to suck the vibrancy out of the surrounding environment. The mass of particles begins seeping across the bed, and then they envelop Jimmy, and it feels like he can’t breathe or move or make a single noise, like he’s neither alive nor dead, and then it passes over him, over his side of the bed. It pools there, and then he reforms. It happens so suddenly it seems this thing in front of him must only be a shell.

  
A memory erupts in the back of Jimmy’s mind – picking shells off the beach with his mum at the age of seven, they had ranked them in order of beauty (what a strange thing to do with the only remains of an organism incapable of rotting away) – and he thinks that this Thomas has just jumped the line to number one.

  
“Neat trick, isn’t it?” Thomas asks before reaching a hand out to graze Jimmy’s cheek. The sensation is a strange collision of not being touched at all and being touched by a lover; a shiver echoes through his chest. He doesn’t answer.

  
“Your heart, darling, calm down. You know how this goes.” He does. Swallowing thickly, he turns his head for a final time, exposing his neck to Thomas. The hand on his cheek trails down the side of his face until it reaches the line of his jaw and the soft skin directly underneath. His thumb rubs slow circles on Jimmy’s pulse point and he feels high. He feels everything. His eyes fall shut so he can just _feel_.

  
“I forget the way you love this part,” Thomas whispers in his ear, so much closer than before. He has one last thing to say, his voice barely audible.

“I've done this a thousand times before, to a thousand others, but it's divinity on you.”

He’s fading now. In the distance there’s a wet cracking noise, and then a not-so-distant flash of pain in his neck severe enough he jolts awake.

\--

“How do you _know_ it’s him?” Sybil asked with a laugh. Thomas sipped his beer and raised his eyebrows incredulously.

“Well, I don’t, you know, have concrete evidence,” he employed his hoighty-toighty inspector voice here and Sybil laughed again, this time with her ugly little snort he adored. “but you don’t know the vibes this boy is throwing off! Up until he left me that little surprise, I was about ninety percent sure he was going to murder me. Now I’m wavering between twenty and fifteen.”

"Charming. Have you told anyone else you’re dealing with Dahmer junior?" Thomas scoffed at this question.

"Sybbie, Sybelia, Sybil. You know very well I’ve no one else to tell but you."

"Thanks for thinking of my pride, dear, but that's not what I meant. Shouldn't you tell a higher-up? In case something... happens, you'll have it documented."

Thomas rolls his eyes. "You've no idea how terrible and paranoid and gay panicky that will come off as, Sybil. Like I think I'm some big danger that my students can't resist. A big gay danger. I hope the movie of my life that will inevitably be made is titled "A Big Gay Danger." You're in charge of seeing my wish fulfilled, Sybil."


End file.
